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Mr Speaker, let me start by saying that it pains me to have to speak today on prioritising the safety of every worker.
In Singapore, where we pride ourselves on being efficient and attentive in all that we do, we certainly need to do more, and do better in workplace safety and health (or WSH).
Alarming rise in workplace fatalities and injuries post-COVID
Sir, it is alarming how the COVID-19 pandemic has seem to set our WSH practices back. Pre-COVID, we were witnessing a downward trend for workplace fatalities, where the workplace fatality rate had dropped from 1.9 per 100,000 workers in 2016, to 1.1 per 100,000 workers in 2019.
But COVID-19 seems to have undone all the hard work and strides that we have made. In 2021, we saw a spike in workplace accidents, injuries, and fatalities, as companies rushed to clear the backlog of work caused by the pandemic.
Workers, who were quarantined for varying periods, returned to new worksite layouts, unfamiliar team members, and constantly changing safe management measures at their worksites. Measures meant to keep them safe from the COVID-19 virus might have unwittingly raised the risk of an accident happening.
The tripartite partners recognised this and encouraged employers to conduct Safety Timeouts four times in the past 18 months – in December 2020, February and June 2021, and most recently in May this year.
While I am sure that the numerous Safety Timeouts have helped companies to re-evaluate their WSH practices and prevented an even sharper rise in workplace fatalities, the unfortunate truth is that workplace accidents, injuries, and fatalities are still occurring at an alarming rate.
The Labour Movement is deeply concerned, and rightfully so. Every life lost is one too many. Injuries sustained because of a workplace accident can also have lifelong debilitating effects. The right to a safe workplace is fundamental, sacred, and we must do all we can to uphold this.
Government has tried, but unilateral action is insufficient
Before I suggest how we can do better, let me first acknowledge what the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) has done in recent months to address the rise in workplace fatalities and injuries.
It is important to acknowledge that MOM has:
Increased the number of safety inspections;
Doubled the maximum composition fine for offences observed during inspections;
Required companies that have been issued stop-work orders or have had workers sustained major injuries to engage external auditors to review their WSH practices; and
Is developing an Approved Code of Practice for Company Directors’ WSH Duties.
While these are indeed important measures, the Government’s actions alone are not enough.
Let’s do RIGHT by our workers
The Labour Movement proposes 5 action areas to further improve WSH practices:
Establish safe and easy-to-use Reporting Channels
Partner the unions to enhance safety Inspections
Step up safety Gearing of our workers
Mandate Higher Management’s commitment to safety
Leverage Technology to enhance workplace safety
Together, they make up the acronym RIGHT.
Let me elaborate.
First, we must establish safe and easy-to-use reporting channels for anyone to report unsafe workplace practices. MOM’s investigations into workplace fatalities often find that unsafe, unsupervised practices had been ongoing for a period of time. Those at the workplace would sometimes even say that is “normal practice”. In some cases, workers would tell us that the unsafe practices had been escalated to their supervisors, but nothing was done. Tragically, the inaction can lead to someone dying from a preventable accident. We must therefore provide a better whistle-blowing channel – one that ensures the anonymity of whistle blowers. We should make near-miss reporting more prevalent in the industry, as these are early warning signs of accidents to come.
We must also allow anyone, including members of public, to report unsafe workplace practices when they see them. In 2016, The New Paper reported how Mr Gusharen Singh snaps pictures of safety lapses at worksites and public spaces and alerts the MOM through the Snap@MOM crowdsourcing app. How can we revive such practices? Could we consider leveraging the OneService mobile application to allow anyone to report unsafe work practices? After all, everyone has a part to play when it comes to safer workplaces.
Next, I hope that MOM can partner the unions to supplement their routine inspections. Since 2019, NTUC has been training our union leaders on WSH. Today, more than 1,000 union leaders have completed the courses. MOM could consider sharing the data received from feedback channels with NTUC, and our union leaders can partner MOM in stepping up safety inspections at these companies. Having union leaders will add an element of moral suasion to MOM’s inspections and help convince workers and supervisors alike to pay more attention to workplace safety.
In the public transport sector, the National Transport Workers’ Union initiated the Rail Industry Safety and Health Community of Practice to enhance safety for our rail workers. Earlier this year, the union, together with the Land Transport Authority and the public transport operators, launched the Safety Champions initiative to empower frontline transport workers to proactively surface feedback and areas for improvement to enhance safety at the workplace. We should strive to replicate this model of tripartite collaboration in other industries.
Beyond doing once-off safety inspections, I hope that MOM will also regularly reinspect companies with poor WSH performance, to ensure that sufficient safety measures have been implemented, and prevent these companies from “relapsing” into poor WSH practices.
Third, workers should be properly geared at the workplace so that their safety is not compromised. This means companies must ensure that the work environment is safe, and their workers are equipped with the proper safety equipment and be trained and certified to perform the work activity. I therefore urge MOM to make WSH training mandatory for all workers in high-risk sectors. NTUC LearningHub stands ready to offer training courses to all workers so that they can continually refresh their WSH knowledge.
Safety is a collective mindset. Beyond ensuring workers are well trained, we also need to ensure that supervisors and management are geared with the right WSH mindset. We can train someone to be the best lifting supervisor, but if his management does not appreciate the dangers involved, his hands could be tied if critical resources are not deployed for his safety needs.
In a recent interview with The Straits Times on 29 July, Minister Tan See Leng said that most workers who died at the workplace in the last few months were experienced staff, and a factor driving up workplace fatalities involved employers pushing staff to catch up on the backlog of work. This just goes to show that even the most experienced of workers can fall victim if tiredness seeps in and causes a momentary lapse in concentration. I would like to call for minimum rest hours for workers working in high-risk sectors to be legislated. If employers are pushing our workers to – quite literally work towards their deaths – then we must surely act to stop this!
Next, buy-in from higher management is vital if we truly want WSH to be pervasive at the workplace. The culture at the top shapes practices on the ground.
In Australia, it is a legal requirement for company directors and business owners to ensure employees’ safety at the workplace. Company directors have been held liable for fatalities, such as a recent case in June 2020, where two directors of the Brisbane Auto Recycling Proprietary Limited were sentenced to jail when a worker was killed by a forklift operated by an unlicensed operator.
MOM is developing the Approved Code of Practice for Company Director’s WSH Duties. I would like to ask the Minister for an update – when will the Code be ready? Like in Australia, we should seriously consider legislating the Code so that it has legislative “teeth”. The bottom line is that company directors must not only be aware, but also act on their WSH roles and responsibilities.
Lastly, we should leverage technology, a key enabler to detect and prevent workplace accidents. Today, workplace safety technology has matured to a level that is possible to predict the risk of workplace accidents.
For example, sensors and wearables can alert management when a worker deviates into a restricted area, or when a worker slips, trips, or falls, allowing medical help to be dispatched quickly. Big data and predictive analytics provide the potential of predicting accidents before they even happen!
Some companies have already started to trial body-worn cameras for their workers. This is something that we should pursue especially in high-risk worksites. Body-worn cameras not only facilitates near-miss reporting and aids in post-incident investigations, but they also allow workers to be more conscious of their actions and behaviour at the worksite.
The cost of such technologies, however, can be prohibitive and it takes an enlightened management – usually large multinationals – to invest in them. We should help our SMEs adopt such technologies to improve their WSH outcomes.
The MOM currently has the Workplace Safety and Health Institute (WSHI), a department that focuses on WSH trends and partners with stakeholders in the technology ecosystem to improve WSH outcomes. I hope MOM can elevate the WSH Institute into a national WSH Centre of Excellence.
The new centre should focus on lowering the adoption cost of new WSH technologies through demand aggregation and facilitate the deployment of WSH technologies in SMEs. It is imperative that we do so as smaller companies cannot possibly hope to emulate the strong WSH practices of large companies without proper support. Government procurement can also lead by example and favour companies that adopt WSH technology as part of the tender bid.
Conclusion
Mr Speaker, I would like to conclude by reiterating my numerous calls over the years for every company to have a mandatory WSH representative, regardless of size and industry. This is already practised in Sweden today, and we should implement this in Singapore too. Like the internal audit functions that many companies have, having a dedicated WSH representative will ensure that sufficient attention is dedicated to WSH issues, no matter how big or small. I sincerely hope that the MOM will consider my numerous proposals on this issue.
Sir, our workers are an important pillar of our economy, and they are vital to the continued success of our Singapore story.
Every Worker Matters. Every Life Matters.
Let us do what’s RIGHT and ensure that our workers can go home safely at the end of every workday.
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